“Software is eating the world…”
Spooky, right? But what do people really mean by this?
The complexity of software has grown at an exponential rate. We’ve known this for a while now, however, what some people are not so aware of is just by how much. Recent headlines have read that Google is currently 2 billion lines of code (LoC). Yes, 2 BILLION, which subsequently require a lot of manpower to maintain and develop. This opens a door to fragilities that companies are desperately looking to shut.
It’s not so much that there aren’t enough developers graduating, it’s that at this rate there is no number of developers worldwide that can bridge this gap. Furthermore, developers just cannot keep up with demand and the rate at which these systems are growing and expanding. It’s also that 2 billion LoCs hoard a lot of baggage or leave unattended code.
On the other hand, organizations are facing the fact that they are too reliant on their systems to run their business. So, the success of businesses goes hand-in-hand with the rate at which their application can keep up with market demands. Time-to-market has become one of the greatest concerns for companies at the moment.
Essentially what organizations need is fast, accurate, cheap programming which complies with its code’s standards and patterns. Which is why for the most part, developers have employed the use of forums such as StackOverflow to help keep up with the hurdles of fast development.
Since the fast industry hit code development, pair-programming has become a growing topic. It defends that for agile software development there would ideally be a collective effort. A developer writing code whilst another proofs said work. Except, remember when we went through the scarcity of man labour for growing demand? This scenario only addresses accurate and compliant coding, but the scales tip on cheap and fast.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a form of code assistance
To mitigate this, organizations are now looking into Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a form of code assistance where your pair-programmer is essentially at your fingertips. More so, developers gain a new perspective into problem solving where accurate, context-aware code completions are suggested allowing developers to code faster without having to reinvent the wheel.
This can be achieved with search engines whose AI is taught through large codebases (both public and private) to produce results that best fit your problem. Marry that with natural language and you get a search engine that understands your needs and provides you with knowledge based on your refined story telling capabilities.
Then, and as if this isn’t already a leap into a new era of development, we have code completions. These can come as either full-sentence or entire function completions and it truly furthers your development experience. Enter, the coding faster part of the equation, and because it’s an AI the more it’s used the better it’s predictions will look like. The secret here lies on companies opting for tailored or custom models that grow and learn on your own code. This means that suggestions become specific to your organization complying with your organization’s standards, knowledge, and patterns.
Learn about Morphis’ AI code Assistant, K. Explorer here >
